Miuccia Prada‘s esoteric perspective is one of the primary reason’s why Prada is one of the definitive brands of the last century. Steven Meisel takes that ethos and channels it into a chess-centric and haunting film filled with unanswered questions. The presence of Vanessa Axente, Magdalena Frackowiak, Madison Headrick, Elza Luijendijk, Iselin Steiro & Anne Vyalitsyna certainly doesn’t hurt either. via Models.com

French Roast News

When Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower (aka Burj Dubai) opened in January 2010 as the world’s tallest building, plans were already on the table for Kingdom Holding Company’s Freedom Tower to reach even higher into the clouds. Under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the structure dwarfs the Burj Khalifa at 1,401m for Freedom Tower vs 828 m for the Burj.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talai originally wanted to build Freedom Tower a mile into the sky, requiring a 12 minute elevator ride into the clouds. Fears that the soil couldn’t support the weight of the foundation resulted in a final plan for a smaller tower in a still mighty tall building scheduled for completion in mid-2017.

China Rising

China’s Sky City One aims to become the world’s tallest building.

As construction of the 1km high Kingdom Tower commenced, researchers set out to understand if one twice as high could be built. China’s Dr. Sang Dae Kim, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat announced that indeed a 2km high tower could soon be a reality and is technically possible.

In mid-July Zhang Yue, CEO, of China’s Broad Sustainable Builing company said the firm will construct a two-kilometre high tower having 636 floors. The location is not yet announced.

Not only does Mr. Yue’s construction company build tall skyscrapers. He builds them fast. Using prefabricated materials the firm built a 16-story building, ‘The New Ark Hotel’, in just six days. After that, a 30-story building rose in Hunan provice in 15 days.

Broad Sustainable Building plans to construct an 838-meter high tower, titled ‘Sky City 220’ in four months time from groundbreaking, making it 10 stories taller than the Burj Khalifa. This sky city tower will have schools, a hospital, 17 helipads and able to house 30,000 people.

Watch the video to the right.

Myth and Skyscrapers

Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity examines contemporary works of art that take as their subject the form, technology, myth, message, and image of that iconic building structure, the skyscraper. While the exhibition has particular relevance to Chicago, the city that is widely known as the birthplace of this architectural type, artists throughout the world—in addition to authors, filmmakers, poets, and undoubtedly architects—have been enthralled by the human desire to build farther and farther into the sky, testing technological limits while embodying a yearning for spiritual connection to the heavens. Artists’ endeavors to explore this desire have taken many forms, from video and film to sculpture, painting, and photography. Read on

“Today’s life is dynamic, so the space we are living in should be dynamic as well, adjustable to our needs that change continuously, to our moods … buildings will follow the rhythms of nature, they will change direction and shape … from sunrise to sunset, and adjust themselves to the weather, buildings will be alive.

Phallic Fiction or Good Land Use?

Skyscrapers are icons of the modern age, masculine symbols of man’s triumph over Mother Nature, who is left in the dust until death, when humans return to their original birthing place on land.

In our post Sept. 11 world, skyscrapers have dual meanings then as modern symbols of imperial power and uncontrolled consumption, as well as glorious human achievements of architectural design and national status.

The owners of Dubai’s Burg Khalifa say that the entire skyscraper is inspired by female principles, found in the hymen flower. I called the assertion ‘phallic fiction’ — a bit like the current financial balance sheet for Dubai World — but a reader correctly pointed out that what matters are the building’s green credentials and not its marketing hype.

Tonight, Another Mars Landing

One of the most intriguing parts of the Mars rover Curiosity’s landing is the lack of control that the scientists and engineers have in the final moments of the mission. Because it takes 14 minutes for signals to be transmitted from Curiosity to Earth, all they can do is watch, wait and hope for success.

Scott Hubbard, who is the former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center and has contributed greatly to the Mars rover program, said: “Everybody is on edge. There’s a lot of confidence there, but the truth is Mars is still mostly an unknown. It’s a tense confidence. The software is loaded, they’re committed, and now they just have to wait and see.”

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